


the twist is that you're just like me

by callmelyss



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Anxiety Attacks, Feelings, Fluff, Force-Sensitive Hux, Hux's Sad Childhood, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Inappropriate Use of the Force, M/M, Post-TLJ, Soft Kylux, That's Not How The Force Works, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-06
Updated: 2018-07-06
Packaged: 2019-06-06 03:14:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15185519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/callmelyss/pseuds/callmelyss
Summary: “And you think I should, what, embark on some indulgent journey of self-discovery just because your Force has inexplicably willed it in the middle of my rest cycle?” he scoffs. “Apologies. I haven’t the time, the inclination, or the ability, I’m afraid.”Ren hasn’t moved his hand, is stroking the side of Hux’s with two fingers. Not quite looking at him, except to dart his gaze in his direction intermittently. “I could help you.”He laughs. Brittle. “I’m not about to become your apprentice, Ren.”





	the twist is that you're just like me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Orangebutterfly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Orangebutterfly/gifts).



> For Kerstin, an exceptionally lovely and supportive person in this fandom.
> 
> And many thanks to [thesevioletdelights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesevioletdelights) and [Magicandmalice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Magicandmalice/pseuds/Magicandmalice) for the brainstorming.
> 
> \--
> 
> Just a content note that this makes reference to the fact that Hux scratches his palms when anxious.

Hux can’t sleep.

He recognizes these evenings as distinct from those when he _does_ not sleep, when there are too many reports to review and a fleet to keep flying and the loathsome Resistance to hunt down and a Supreme Leader to overthrow, when sleep is a luxury he cannot afford and so he forgoes it, his mind buzzing, hive-like, with stims and caffeine, fingers twitching over his console keys, a tic spasming under his right eye as he plots and plans. 

No, his self-inflicted insomnia is altogether different from this. This unease in his own bed and his own chambers and his own skin, shallow sleep troubled by dreams of worlds he hasn’t seen and people he doesn’t know. The tranqs don’t help. Neither does reading his technical journals. Or the round after round of holochess he plays against himself. And if he stays put for too long, caged, not enough room to properly pace, he chews his lips red and scratches his hands bloody. 

There’s nothing for it, really, except to walk the _Finalizer_ until his shift begins, and so he does. Starts on deck A and makes the full circuit, his greatcoat swinging around him, command cap pulled low over his eyes. When he completes one loop, he descends a level—and again. It’s not such an uncommon occurrence that his appearance alarms his crew, the ‘troopers on their patrols and the maintenance workers making off-shift repairs, although he does startle more than one lieutenant sneaking back to bed after a late-night rendezvous. (He may need to issue a memo, he thinks after the third such incident.)

On deck F, he encounters a mouse droid. 

“Hello, MSE-6-F583F,” Hux greets it, reading the serial number on its side, receiving the customary scroll of output in response. “All quiet here?” He has a habit, periodically, of talking to the droids as he walks; some have even begun to seek him out on these nights. Their responses are limited, much of his conversation beyond the range of their processing power, but still, he appreciates the sense that they’re listening, even if they don’t entirely understand.

He is musing to F583F about the need for a new officer recruitment campaign after D’Qar and Crait when he first hears it, behind him, almost inaudible: _Armitage_.

Hux whirls, ready to deliver an exceptional dressing down to whomever would _dare_ —

But the corridor is empty.

“Did you hear that?” he asks F583F.

 _No additional auditory input detected, General_.

He draws in a steadying breath. It’s late, and he _is_ tired. Likely he imagined it. After all, there’s no one here left _to_ call him 'Armitage' with Phasma gone. And she rarely took the liberty, except to make a point.

He continues walking, trying to recover his line of thought. He had had half a useful idea for a new slogan when— 

 _Armitage_.

This time the voice comes from ahead and to the right. He advances on it, hand going to his blaster, and makes a sharp turn down the next corridor. F583F skitters to catch up. But again, he finds no one.

At his feet, he catches a glimmer of glass, bends to examine what appears to be a marble, a swirling green galaxy at its center. But as he reaches to touch, it vanishes. A trick of the light, then. He jerks upright again, grateful for the empty hallway. No one to witness his foolishness.

And he hears something else now, a sort of drumming, a persistent beat tapping against the metal. Hux takes a few cautious steps forward.  He makes another turn and—

It’s _raining_ on his ship. Steady gray sheets of it descending from the ceiling. Puddles beginning to collect on the floor. Thunder rumbles in the distance.

“Do you, do you see that?” Hux asks F583F.

 _More detail required, General, please specify ‘that_.’

Cautious, Hux slips off one glove and holds his hand out, feeling the soothing patter of the drops against his scraped palm. _It feels real enough, but this can’t be—I must be—_

Enthralled, he takes a step forward into the downpour—water trickles down his collar immediately—removes his command cap, and tilts his face back, letting the rain hit it, cooling his skin. He hasn’t felt rain like this since he was very young. The wind picks up around him, and a particular sea smell rolls through the air, brine and salt and damp. That too is so much like Arkanis that his throat seizes. His boots sink into fine sand; beachgrass rustles; a gull calls overhead.

 _Armitage_.

He jerks towards the voice, drawing his blaster now, and finds himself, again, alone in the corridor on the _Finalizer_ , except for the mouse droid lingering at his feet. “ _Who’s there?_ ” he demands, hating the shrill sound of his own voice. “Show yourself, damn you, that’s an order.” 

 _Armitage_. Almost like a caress. Familiar, gentle. A woman. _Armitage_.

He stalks away from the sound of it, from the way the whispers echo around him, pressing at him, _pursuing_ him. “Leave me be,” he begs. Hurrying now. Nearly breaking into a run.

Coming around the next corner, he crashes headlong into Kylo Ren.

“ _Kriff_ ,” Hux says, just this side of too loud as he bounces off the Supreme Leader’s chest. F583F knocks into his ankle, and he stumbles.

 _“_ Careful, General.” Ren steadies him, bracing one hand under his elbow.

“My apologies, Supreme Leader. Excuse me.” He moves to leave, but Ren hasn’t relinquished his hold on his arm. Is staring at him instead of letting him go.

“You’re unwell,” he says in that stating-the-kriffing-obvious way he has. “You’re shaking.” No real concern in his voice, only a breed of empty, detached curiosity, as though he’s encountering such a phenomenon for the first time.

And Hux can imagine how delirious he looks: paler than usual, wild-eyed, a fresh sheen of sweat across his face, hair lank, lips gnawed raw, still clutching his blaster in one hand, his cap and one glove missing. No, he doesn’t feel quite himself. But it’s Ren, so he says, “I’m fine, thank you.”

“You need medical.”

 _Armitage_. An unseen hand drifts over his brow.  

 _Oh fuck._ He shudders. He very well _might_ need medical. He’s starting to feel lightheaded; his pulse flutters in his chest, too fast and faint; his vision narrows. Still, he cannot afford to, _not in front of Ren_ , he tries to insist to his rebelling senses. “That’s not—“

Necessary, he intends to say.

Emphatically _does not_ mean to swoon.

Nonetheless.

 

* * *

 

Hux comes to, groggy and cotton-mouthed, a small puddle of drool under his cheek, and his greatcoat draped over him like a blanket. As he levels himself into a sitting position, he sees both of his hands are bandaged neatly in white gauze; they smell cloyingly of bacta. But this isn’t medical—it’s a front room in First Order executive quarters, not so dissimilar from his own, an abundance of black durasteel accented in silver and red. Here, however, twisted, tortured hangings line the wall, the faces of the damned rendered in glass and stone; a bookcase of ancient-looking texts stands behind the sofa where he’s sitting; the lights are set lower and the temperature permissively higher than the rest of the ship. Therefore: Ren’s chambers.

He’s been here perhaps a dozen times during their long acquaintance, once early on when he thought they could still be collaborators—even friends—and then for more than a few contentious interviews after that. In truth, the position of Supreme Leader merits finer accommodations than this, as well as a flagship, but resources and space remain limited, and Hux has no interest in attending to Ren’s comfort or his vanity. Although he would be pleased to see him off the _Finalizer_ at last.

 _Soon_ , he promises himself, as he has often the past few weeks. _But for now…_

He moves to plant his feet on the floor and get the hells out of here when he realizes his boots, and the pair of knives hidden in them, are gone. As is his belt with its blaster. A quick check confirms that the monomolecular blade strapped to his forearm has likewise been removed. He swallows an anxious squawk.

“The table by the door,” Ren says. He’s leaning in the entryway of his meditation room—his expression inscrutable, eyes bright—and studying him, like one might a rat in a maze. No telling how long he’s been standing there, watching him fumble.

On the sideboard, a heavy crystal decanter begins to rattle, the stopper vibrating in its setting. _Another cheap trick with the kriffing Force_. Hux scowls, annoyed that the noise made him jump.

Certainly, Ren is toying with him, but he hurries toward the exit anyway, meaning to snatch up his effects and leave, never mind who’s lurking to see him exiting the Supreme Leader’s quarters so disheveled, with his boots in hand. He needs to get clear of—whatever this is. Manage a few hours’ sleep before his shift, if he can. As for earlier, well. He’s wiped a medical droid’s memory before and he can again, after he confirms his neurological status. Needs must.

He’s midway across the room when Ren says, “You’ve been having headaches.” Not taunting, as he might have expected, but quiet. Assertive.

Hux pauses, unsure where this is going. Impossible to say with Ren most of the time. “Yes, I have them quite frequently.” _Like when you’re around_. “They’re rather common for people in my position.” He shrugs. Nothing especially incriminating about the odd migraine.

“Now you’re hearing voices.”

He tenses and resumes his path to his belongings. That would make for a much more damning admission—grounds, in fact, to strip him of his command, at least temporarily—and besides he’s in no mood to have a heart-to-heart with Kylo Ren about what happened before. He’s just tired. Thinks he may always be at this juncture. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken, Supreme Leader,” he says, acidly. Picks up his knife in its sheath. He makes sure not to put his back to Ren.

He shakes his head and comes into the room. Prowling. Of course, if he wants to stop Hux, he will, nothing to be done about it, but so far he’s made no move to that effect. The decanter continues to tremble in place, the soft chime of glass against glass growing louder and louder still. “And you’re having visions.”

Hux freezes at the choice of words, hands curled around his knife. “You mean hallucinations.”

“No,” Ren says slowly. And there’s something about his eyes, something awful. Almost kind. “I mean visions.”

_He can’t possibly—_

The crystal is almost humming for how it’s shaking, and he wants to stop up his ears to block the noise of it. “ _Ren_ , would you desist with that, please. I’m trying to think.”

He takes another step toward Hux, just one, and so deliberate, as he never is, and extends one hand toward him, although he stops well short of touching him. “That isn’t me,” he says. Equally slow. Gentle.

He shakes his head, aggravated. He doesn’t possess the patience or the capacity for Ren’s nonsense right now, has better things to do than play childish games

“Hux,” he says. “You’re—“

And too easy to see what he means, to see it writ plain in that too-grave expression, and he’s always had a talent for reading Ren, poorly as it serves him now. His hands go white-knuckled around the sheath. “No. That isn’t. That’s not possible.”

 _Armitage_ , he hears. All around him.

Two events occur simultaneously: the decanter shatters in a spectacular hail of red shards, and Hux snaps his own blade clean in half.

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says, and then his knees are buckling.

The world grays at the edges, and then, improbably, Kylo Ren’s face swims into view. The thin line of his scar. His eyes, wide and alarmed. He’s aware, vaguely, of Ren’s hands on his shoulders, and he sees his own fists balled up in Ren’s tunic, either dragging him in or holding him at arm’s length or somehow both. Hux can’t hear half of what he’s saying, although he can see him repeating his name, and there’s a high ringing in his ears that may be from the decanter exploding and may be—everything else. He draws in a shaky lungful of air, although that seems thin, insufficient, and he’s gasping, wheezing. His chest tightens.

And that, yes, _that’s_ what Ren is telling him, _Breathe, Hux, okay, just breathe,_ in endless repetition, _You’re fine_ , _you’re going to be fine_ , as though he thinks by saying so enough times, he can make it true.

 

* * *

 

“Here.” Ren holds out a teacup, fine bone-white china, delicate in a way nothing he owns is. A thin spiral of steam winds up from the dark surface of the liquid.

“Thank you.” Hux accepts it, pausing to inhale deeply, his eyes closing. He’s curled on Ren’s sofa again, where he allowed himself to be coaxed once his breathing stabilized. Huddles now in the shelter of his coat, which he’s pulled almost tent-like around him. He takes another fortifying sniff of the tea, ignoring the way the cup rattles slightly in his hands. This isn’t tarine, something lighter and more floral, but it buoys him nonetheless. He chances a sip, then clears his throat. 

“I suppose I just don’t understand how this is possible,” he says. Voice nearly steady now. “I’ve never shown any aptitude for it. And they tested us extensively at the Academy, I assure you. My understanding was that this _tendency_ tends to manifest primarily in childhood and adolescence.”

 _I’m almost thirty-five for kriff’s sake_. _How could I possibly develop Force sensitivity_ now _?_

Ren shakes his head. He’s settled next to him on the sofa, close enough to reach for him if he has another fit, far enough away so as to be unthreatening. He’s still moving self-consciously, carefully. Entirely un-Ren-like. Perplexing. “If you have the capacity, you’ve always had it,” he explains. “It’s possible you were a latent. No one fully understands all the triggers. But I haven’t _sensed_ another awakening and I would. Especially… No. My best guess is you’ve been suppressing it. Somehow. Without knowing.”

“Suppressing it? That can be done?” He sets his teacup down on the table, relieved as he does that it shakes almost not at all. 

Ren hums, noncommittal, and idly raises the cup up again, floating it through the air as he speaks. Showing off, as ever. “Most Force sensitives simply lack the proper training to access their abilities. Their capacity for it manifests in small, uncontrolled ways. Overhearing thoughts is common. Dreams. But they don’t hone any particular skill. My moth—General Organa is Force-sensitive, for example, but never studied. Her powers, therefore, are limited. And undeveloped talents often atrophy over time. But you…actively reject the Force. Maybe even resist it. That’s, if not unprecedented, unusual.”

It’s tempting, even now, to rail against the imprecise nature of such a discussion, so vague and purely theoretical. How can there be no data on a phenomenon that has ostensibly existed for thousands of years? No algorithms? Not a single predictive model? But he knows well how Ren responds to any quibbling regarding the Force. “Then I should be able to go back to doing so, yes? Or else simply ignore it until it withers on the vine permanently? That’s…good news.” 

Maybe his life doesn’t have to be upended by this. Maybe it doesn’t have to matter, to mean anything. He would still rather he had never— But if he can get his legs under him, stand without swaying, and walk out of here, leaving this bizarre revelation far behind him, he gladly will.

Ren frowns at him in that all-too-recognizable _you don’t understand my impenetrable mystical whatnot_ way. The teacup settles neatly back on the table. “I’m not sure it’s that simple, Hux. After all, you had this—episode. For a reason.”

“Exhaustion,” Hux suggests. “Stress. Why most people have _episodes_. Force-related and otherwise.”

“You’ve been exhausted before. Stressed, too,” he points out. 

 _No thanks to you._ He scowls and crosses his arms. “There’s no other reason for it to happen. Nothing has changed.” 

“It’s impossible to know that without investigating it.” And ah, there it is. Ren working up to something. 

Well, let him try. He presses his lips together. Resists the urge to grind his teeth. “I have no interest in that. In exploring any of this.”

“What if it—“ 

“It won’t.” He’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“You don’t know that.“

“I do,” Hux insists. 

“But _why_ won’t you _—_ “

“Because I don’t want any part of this!” he shouts. This outburst startles him; he hadn’t even felt it welling up, as he usually does. His patience has thinned more than he realized. “This ineffable energy and all of its accompanying twaddle. I’ve never wanted it. It means something to you, Ren. It’s never meant a damn thing to me, except confusion and destruction and _waste_.”

There may have been a time, briefly, when he was very young, that he might have thought otherwise, but. _Hands clench, bruising tight, on his shoulders and_ _shake him_. No, he’d been quickly relieved of those notions and rightly so.

He expects another vehement denial from Ren but receives only quiet consideration in response. Eventually, he makes an abortive half-gesture towards Hux, as though he might touch him, but jerks his hand away. “You really mean that, don’t you,” he says. Studying his face. “You don’t want it. The Force.”

Hux looks down at his hands. Picks at a loose thread from the gauze wrapped around his palm. Worries it free. “Is that so difficult to believe?” 

The idea that all this time, he might have been— _hells_. And that his accomplishments, which he’s bleed and sweat for his entire life, might not be really his at all, the product of bloody _magic_. He swallows against the bile rising at the thought.

“Hey.” Ren does touch him then. Curling his fingers over Hux’s, quelling his fidgeting. “You’re still you. The same tedious, overbearing paper-pusher you’ve always been.” He doesn’t quite laugh at this, neither of them do, but something like a smile quirks his lips and it's tempting to answer it with the same. “This is just another part of you.” 

“And you think I should, what, embark on some indulgent journey of self-discovery just because your Force has inexplicably willed it in the middle of my rest cycle?” he scoffs. “Apologies. I haven’t the time, the inclination, or the ability, I’m afraid.”

Ren hasn’t moved his hand, is stroking the side of Hux’s with two fingers. Not quite looking at him, except to dart his gaze in his direction intermittently. “I could help you.”

He laughs. Brittle. “I’m not about to become your apprentice, Ren.” _I’m not a complete idiot._

“That isn’t—I wasn’t suggesting that,” he says. Frowning. Also looking wounded, of course, and, fuck, Hux misses the mask sometimes. “Only I could show you. If you wanted. What it’s like.”

There’s no denying that in this very specific case, Ren actually knows what he’s talking about. But despite the current kind-and-sympathetic act, Hux has no reason to believe he won’t use this as an opportunity to undermine him, especially with such an advantage. _And the Force has always been his advantage_. Of course, they’ve been ready to turn on each other at a moment’s notice for years; he’s still cursing himself for not being faster, more decisive in the throne room on the _Supremacy_. If he had, he could be having this breakdown in peace and with the mantle of the Emperor around his shoulders.

No, impossible to trust anything Ren offers when he’s so defenseless. Furthermore, he shouldn’t _want_ to accept it. Doesn’t.

He makes an exasperated noise in the back of his throat. “Kriff, Hux, I’m not going to—“ He shakes his head. “Here.” His blaster belt flies into his outstretched hand, and Ren presses it into his grip. “You’re armed. Feel better?”

He blinks down at the weapon in his hand. “You—“ he tries. “Ren, why would you _want_ to help me? We both know I’d never do the same for you.”

His mouth quirks again. Not really a smile; Ren never does. “You did once,” he says. Meaning Starkiller. He waves off the objection _I was under orders_ before Hux can say it. “You could have ignored Snoke if you wanted. But maybe I’m curious, too,” he tries. “This is, as you noted, my area of expertise.”

Hux considers this, knowing it’s both these reasons to Ren’s mind and neither of them in fact. Ren lies to no one so well as to himself. He weighs the comforting mass of his blaster against his palm. Swallows. “Very well,” he agrees. “What do we do?”

 

* * *

 

“Breathe,” Ren tells him for what feels like the tenth time in the last hour.

“I _am_ breathing,” Hux snaps. They’re sitting cross-legged and face-to-face on Ren’s sofa now, knees not quite touching. 

“No. Not like that,” he says. “Not so—aggressive. Here.” He reaches over and _presses_ against Hux’s middle, just below his ribs, pushing all the air out of his lungs in a _whoosh_. “Now, breathe in, more, more, keep going. Good.” Compels him to exhale slowly, the flat of his hand firm against his diaphragm. “Better. Again.”

They repeat this process several times until Hux is ready to insist that he doesn’t kriffing feel _anything_ , only he starts to, on the seventh or eighth repetition, his shoulders loosening gradually, his fingers unclenching, his eyelids drooping.

“You can close your eyes, if that's comfortable,” Ren tells him, and he snaps alert again. “Oh for kriff's—here. I’ll close mine, too, if you want.” 

 _Could just shoot him now_.

“Please don’t,” he says. He reaches to undo the bandage around Hux’s hand, unmarred now that the bacta’s done its work. “This next part will be easier if I, uh, touch you,” he says by way of explanation.

“Fine,” Hux agrees. He’s trying not to think about how there’s been a fair bit of that, _touching_ , already. He only startles somewhat when Ren takes his hand again. Can feel the rasp and drag of his callouses—the ones from wielding his lightsaber and piloting the _Silencer_ —slide against his own, mismatched, each of them rough where the other’s smooth. He lets loose a shuddering breath and does close his eyes. It’s worse, somehow, to sit here staring at Ren’s face, cataloging how his brow furrows, the slight twitch of his nose, the crooked cant of his mouth, while holding his hand.

“I’m going to reach out to you with the Force. Just keep breathing.”

It’s tentative at first, a sort of shivering brush against his thoughts, not unfamiliar, but distinct from his own. Recognizable, he thinks, as Ren, the specific bright darkness of him, illuminated and somehow deeply shadowed all at once, lightning in a storm cloud. The soft resonance of his voice. A taste, too, like caf and earth and tart berries. _Hello_.

He can, Hux discovers, reciprocate if he both focuses and unfocuses, sending out his own fragment of self, like extending a hand, although he has no sense of how it manifests in its entirety, has only a piecemeal sense of himself. Like trying to look at your face without a mirror, he decides.

 _Here_ , Ren says. _This is you._ Showing him a fractal, precise and unyielding in its repetition, edges glinting like harsh light on steel. The drumbeat of boots marching punctuates the unending division of lines and angles. An undercurrent: the perfect tick of cycling gears. Five blazing lights separate and reunite infinitely at fixed intervals. Just one irregularity weaves through it, disappearing and reappearing: a curving gray-green thread of rain and sea salt.

He can feel Ren gliding along that line, lightly tracing its path as he might a half-healed wound. Curious. Tender. _Never noticed this before_.

He dislikes the implication immediately and is annoyed with the aberration as well. Withdraws. _Spend much time contemplating my essence, do you, Ren?_  

 _Don’t be so defensive_ , he urges. Winding around him. _Come on. I want to show you something_.

There’s a tug, not unlike Ren pulling on their joined hands, and they’re moving out of the confines of his chambers and into the rest of the ship. Hux sucks in an involuntary breath when he sees— _feels?_ —the expanse of the _Finalizer_ around him, thousands of sparking lights, interconnected by fine shimmering strands, and the ship itself, thrumming with its own particular energy.

 _Stars_.

A pleased ripple passes between him and Ren. _You like it?_

 _I—_ He can feel himself swallow, notes the peculiar connect and disconnect between this self and his physical body. _It’s lovely_. He reaches out to touch a node as he passes. Recognizes the deck E gardens, the long rows of vegetation, making oxygen, the throb of light and life in it. _So?_

 _Yes,_ Ren confirms. _Every living thing_.

They skim down the corridors of the ship, and Hux is conscious of a hundred different impressions. The troubled dreams of stormtrooper—sand and grit and loss. An engineer humming a popular holovid tune as she prepares for the early shift, reciting the details of her report to herself. The sleepy, pleased mien of a lieutenant as he stumbles back to bed, the memory of his lover’s skin still thrilling along his own. Hux withdraws quickly from this last, not wanting to recognize the young man from his thoughts so soon after such an intimate moment, not wanting, either, to linger with Ren there, although why he can’t say.

Ren, for his part, only murmurs encouragement, and draws him along, leading him past the durasteel walls of his ship and out into open space.

There’s a jolt of dysphoria as he does so, his conscious mind resisting this step into the void, but he finds much more than the nothing he was expecting. If the _Finalizer_ had the glimmer and activity of an immense city, the system beyond it and the space beyond that are an endless sea of light and motion. He can see the massive undulations of gravitational waves, rising and falling, constant, inexorable. He traces the wakes left behind by ships, theirs and others, tastes the after-echoes of their passing, the small lives contained with them. The planets and stars dazzle within their individual coronas, emitting and exchanging their own unique signatures, the effect both cacophonous and symphonic all at once.

He is, Hux realizes, trembling again, unequal to what he’s witnessing, caught, suddenly, in the flow and ebb of it all, feeling like he might be washed away by the immensity of it, his negligible substance consumed by a ravenous galaxy. But as soon as he feels himself begin to slip, Ren’s hand tightens on his own, grounding him, and when he finds him again in the Force, he’s an anchor, mooring him to the _Finalizer_ and his individual self. _Easy_ , he says. 

 _Breathe?_ Hux asks, amused.

 _Breathe_ , Ren confirms. _Let’s…take a step back_.

The tapestry of light and energy fades, both to his disappointment and profound relief, and he once against occupies a more neutral space with Ren, the calm pocket that seems to exist within his chambers, by some incidence or trick.

 _It’s shielding_ , Ren explains.  _I can teach you, if you want_. 

 _Thank you_ , Hux says. Meaning both for the offer and for—showing him. His gratitude manifests as a faint rustling, the gentle brush of vegetation in the wind. _Beachgrass_ , he thinks. His pulse trips again. He can feel that incongruous thread winding through him, rainfall and waves, and it occurs to him that he could follow it, as he did in the corridors of his ship, and trace it to its origins. 

 _Ren?_ he asks. Hesitant.

 _Right here_. And he coils around him, ultraviolet and somehow warm. Squeezes his fingers where they’re sitting together, still.

Bolstered, Hux takes up the slack of the thread, feeling his way along it. After he secures a firm hold, everything _shifts_ , and he’s standing by the ocean on Arkanis, feet sinking into the sand, with Ren at his side. 

“It’s just a vision,” he reassures him.

In the distance, a familiar voice calls, “Armitage!”

No question, then, about which way to go. They walk together through the surf, hand-in-hand even here, Ren an unexpectedly sturdy presence next to him. Gulls screech overhead; the sea rumbles at their right; the clouds above sit heavy, dark with rain.

“Armitage!” they hear again.

Coming around the bend, they see her: a young woman standing on the shore, her hands cupped around her mouth. “Armitage!” she shouts. Not desperate, not worried at all. Her ash blonde hair whips around her face. Even at this distance, Hux can see her eyes are green.

Ren’s fingers tighten around his. “Oh kriff, that’s—“

“My mother,” he says. Slow. Stunned.

“Mama!” A small child runs toward her from the other direction. A streak of red. He rushes into her arms and she lifts him easily, spinning with him, kissing his face and bright hair. Both laughing. It’s just starting to rain, the patter of fat raindrops on the water.

Hux recoils as if struck. Thinking he may have been, feeling the blow right in his sternum. His breath comes in short, harsh pants, and he covers his face. The sofa is shaking under them, rattling against the floor. Something delicate tumbles off the bookcase and shatters.

“Hux—“ Ren is reaching for him.

_His mother’s face above his bed, her hand on his brow, cool, steadying, soothing._

“Hux.”

_The two of them, curled together in a corner of the kitchen, reading a holorecord together, her chin resting on top of his head, her arms around him, safe._

“Hux!”

_His mother, sitting cross-legged with him on the floor, rolling marbles to him one by one, and he remembers the trembling noise they make against the uneven wooden floors. Abruptly, one lifts into the air, a spiral of green at its center. He’s lifting both hands toward it, laughing, delighted, as he draws it towards him until it comes to rest in one small fist._

_“This must be a secret, Armitage—“_

“Fuck,” he gasps, coming out of it all at once. His cheeks are wet; his lips taste like saltwater. Ren’s hands tighten on his shoulders again. For a moment, Hux thinks he might be sick and jerks away, out of his hold. “ _Fuck_ ,” he says, quieter, but more harshly.

“Hux,” Ren says again. Naked sympathy in his eyes, and that, _that_ is far too much to bear. He ought to strike him for the presumption.

Instead, he scuttles backward, until his back hits the arm of the sofa. “Did you—“ he demands.

_Did you see that?_

Worse: _did you know?_

Worst: _did you trick me somehow?_ His grip tightens on his blaster. He'd forgotten he was holding it.

Ren starts to move toward him, but something about Hux’s face must warn him off, because he stops midway. “No, I—I didn’t know. I—those were your memories, Hux. That was _her_. Fuck. She _knew._ ”

“Was she?” _Like me?_

He shakes his head, hair obscuring his face. “I’m not sure. Maybe. It runs in families sometimes.” _My family,_ he doesn’t say. “But just as often it—happens.”

Hux draws his legs up toward his chest, hugging them. He can’t look at Ren, at his plaintive face and too-understanding eyes. “I never knew what she looked like,” he murmurs. “I went back once, to try to find her, but. After the bombardment, many people were displaced. She might have left.” Thirty years ago now, the evacuation.

An echo: _Armitage!_

 _The smell of his father’s cologne, the underlying notes of fear and sweat. The terrible rumble of ships as people try to flee. His mother’s arms outstretched. His own, mirroring hers. Snot and tears streaming down his face as he wails_.

His hands clench.

 _Alone in the cramped quarters they share on the transport_ , _he levitates the marble. Lets it loop around his fingers in a loose orbit._

_His father, standing in the doorway._

He lets out a ragged breath.

_His fists._

Ren grabs at his wrists then, urging him forward, and he goes, yielding, finding the soft weave of his tunic, the smooth expanse of his neck, his arms closing around him in return. He’s stroking his back, murmuring nonsense in his ear, voice low and rumbling, and it should be unbearable, _is_ unbearable that he only has Ren to witness this, to see, to reach for, when all they’ve ever done, all they've ever been to each other—

Another memory, not his, he can feel as such: _he’s young, crying, being led away by the hand. Not roughly, as before_ , _not fleeing_. _Instead, he’s being guided across a green expanse, leaving a lean, graying man and a small, dark-eyed woman behind. He looks up at the person walking with him, and, for a moment, it’s the man from Crait, Luke Skywalker, looking much younger, less careworn, smiling, but then his face shifts and it’s Snoke grimacing down at him, pale face ancient and cruel and sneering._

He tightens his hold on Ren and the vision dissolves. He finds, again, his internal sense of _Ren_ , like antimatter and quintessence. Like a starless midnight illuminated only by the ignition of his crackling lightsaber. He feels Ren inviting him in, deeper, closer, somehow _shyly_. Uncertain. And he doesn’t understand why until he sees it, tastes it, the biting sapor of his fear, his anger, his loneliness, terrible in its magnitude, unrelenting and overwhelming, except, perhaps only when compared to Hux’s own.

And he should, he could memorize this, the unprotected places where a knife would so effortlessly stick, the soft underside too easily targeted by the blaster shot, the exposed length of Ren’s throat offered freely for his teeth. Or.

It feels a bit like prying his own ribcage apart, as awful and simple as that, every bleak thought spilling out of him, every doubt and every bruise presented for Ren’s inspection in return. This is both like and unlike their earlier explorations, he muses, as immense as being confronted with the whole of the interconnected universe, as particular as tracing a thread of rain along a pathway to the sea. Mingling in open space, dark and light. Feather-soft touches. Old scars. _Ren_.

He comes back to himself slowly, gradually, heady with the feeling of—everything. Is aware, suddenly, of the way he’s tucked up under Ren’s chin, their legs tangled together, both of them clutching at each other for fear of drowning otherwise. And under other circumstances, he would blush at the scene, wonder what it would look like if someone were to discover them like this. Can only think now, how little they would comprehend of what they saw, if they were to see it.

And: _kark it_. When he catches Ren looking down at him, unsure and also far too fondly, he leans up and kisses him. Makes an encouraging noise when he opens, so sweetly, for him right away. Chases the first brush of tongue with his own. Reaches up to cradle his face in both hands, adjusting the angle just so for something deeper, hungrier. His lips ache, still this side of pleasurable, and he slides his fingers up into Ren’s hair, burying them in it. When he pulls, not _too_ gently, Ren makes a plaintive noise against his teeth, the sound of it going straight to his cock.

Ren’s arms shift around him immediately, no longer seizing him as though he’s the last stable thing in the galaxy, seizing him like, _well_. His nerves light up under his hands, skin especially sensitive in the wake of their communing, and he moans, voluptuous and unrestrained, when Ren slips them under the fabric of his shirt, warm and rough and perfect. 

“Fuck, you feel good,” Hux breathes, withdrawing just enough to mouth at Ren’s jaw, the underside of his chin, just below his ear. And he does at that, every touch and caress and kiss reverberating between them through the Force. “Is this—“

 _Is it real?_ He wants to know. _Is it us, or something else?_

“It’s—“ Ren pauses, minding the look Hux gives him in anticipation of an overwrought metaphysical answer to his question. “It’s us,” he says simply. “It’s real.”

He rewards him with a lengthy kiss, licking hot, wet, into his mouth, and arches against him when Ren draws his nails across his lower back. He could swear small sparks are flying off him, the frisson between them nearly visible. He’s dizzy, overcome, just from kissing, and maybe _this_ is why the Jedi avoided such things. It almost feels like too much to endure.

Then Ren writhes under him, the bulge of his erection bumping Hux’s own, and he decides they were daft after all.

It takes a not-insignificant effort to get them both out of their clothes, Force or no, not everything surviving their haste—no few lost buttons and a rip in Ren’s tunic—and Hux feels like he might shiver out of his own skin by the time they’re done. Ren, for his part, seems similarly affected. His fingers shake in Hux’s hair, between his scapulae, on his hips. His face and chest are already flushed. 

“Is there—“ Hux asks, as he resettles himself in Ren’s lap, the two of them pressed together on the sofa. Relishing the heaviness of Ren’s cock nudging his thigh, his own rubbing against Ren’s stomach, slippery with sweat and pre-come.

He raises both eyebrows at the distinct _crash_ from the 'fresher before the bottle of lube wings its way through the air and into Ren’s hand. 

“I’ll teach you,” he says, and Hux has to kiss him again, feeling that half-smile against his lips.

“Here,” he says, pouring a generous quantity over Ren’s fingers and a smaller amount into his own palm. “You—and I’ll?”

And he doesn’t really need the Force or words to convey his meaning, he thinks, although useful, perhaps, to have both. He shifts up on his knees to give Ren better access as he grazes the curve of his arse, then dips his fingers between his cheeks. Hux shudders as he presses one inside, kisses the concern from Ren’s face. He leans into the contact, urging him deeper, to the first knuckle, then to the second, then to the third.

He allows himself a moment to luxuriate in the feeling of it before he remembers his own task and takes Ren in hand, slicking the length of his cock, enjoying the soft glide of his skin against his palm. Ren tilts back his head, moans while working another finger into him, and Hux feels a peculiar echo between them, both the sense of touching and being touched; his own erection twitches in response, his balls tightening. 

He leans forward and drags his teeth down Ren’s throat, experimentally. They both groan at the sensation. “Careful,” Ren gasps. 

Hux laps at the raw mark he left, soothing, apologetic. “Hurry,” he says. “I’m almost ready.”

He’s had plenty of sexual partners, a few he might even call lovers if he were feeling sentimental, but he doesn’t think he’s ever scrambled onto someone’s cock the way he does Ren’s, sinking down onto the full, thick length of him in one smooth motion. He closes his eyes, breath stuttering, when he’s seated, almost undone by it all—the galvanic thrill charging over his skin, still sensitive; the perfect stretch of how Ren’s filling him; the phantom feeling too, of his own cock buried in tight, contracting heat; the strum and whir of his connection with Ren through the Force, the two of them bound and tangled in ways he can’t fully name. 

Ren cradles his face. “Okay?” he asks. Brows knit. Eyes, _oh_ , entirely too tender.

Hux nods, letting his forehead rest against his, just breathing. “Yes. It’s—"

"I know."

"How do you ever?”

He shakes his head. “I never have. With another Force user, I mean. It’s. _Stars_ , Hux.”

They begin to move together then, exquisitely, excruciatingly slow at first, rising and falling like a tide, Ren arching up to meet his downward thrusts, momentum and gravity bringing them together time and again, and then faster, harder, Ren’s cock hitting that bright point of pleasure in him every time until he’s throwing his head back, toes curling, both arms clasped around Ren’s neck as he fucks into him. It’s unlike anything he’s ever felt. And both of them quiet, save for the occasional murmur of encouragement, no need to ask for this pace or that angle or for a messy, enthusiastic kiss, teeth catching lips. They simply know.

He’s incredibly close, almost too soon, when he feels Ren falter and stop under him, although he hasn’t come either. “Hux?” he asks. Sounding _bemused_.

He opens his eyes and tightens his grip on Ren, startled, when he finds both of them and all of the furniture floating about six feet off the ground, everything in Ren’s chambers levitating, including the shards of glass from earlier, gleaming and sharp, spinning through the air.

“ _Kriff_ ,” he says, alarmed. Even more so when he feels Ren’s chest shaking under him. Except—

He’s laughing. Not much more than a quiet chuckle really, but nonetheless. _Laughter_. Hux has never seen the way Ren’s eyes crinkle at the corners like that, or the way his forehead creases, or how his bottom teeth are slightly crooked. He has the oddest sensation, then, of something sliding into place, some meeting of jagged edges, imperfect and uneven otherwise, now less so.

Completely foolish to kiss Ren for any of that, for _laughing_ or, but he does, pecking fondly over his face after, nipping gently at his moles, and he’s scarcely aware of the impressions diffusing between them, a wordless exchange of thoughts much too embarrassing to utter aloud—among them _thank you_ and _lovely_ and _want you_ —as they float, suspended in mid-air.

Finally, he feels Ren reach out and _twist_ at some invisible strand, and everything lowers again. He shifts the two of them as they descend, lifting Hux’s knees and tipping him over onto his back without displacing him, and thrusts, long, slow, hard, hitting him deeply, precisely until he comes, clutching at him with every limb and shouting. Ren follows not long after, the afterimage of it washing through him, too, almost like a second orgasm, and as his pulse quiets, he drifts, not untethered but light. 

He sighs when Ren slips out of him, his weight sinking back onto him afterward, heavy but not unpleasant, his face pressed to his sternum, exhalations coming in soft gusts against his skin. Hux wraps both arms around his shoulders, drawing him closer, not objecting to the sweat or the stickiness or the heat for now. Kisses his damp hair. Feels the wind and unwind of them in the Force, too, lazy, content, untroubled. Circling spirals.

He recognizes the first twitching of machinations in the back of his thoughts, the demand to know _what does this mean_ and _how do we proceed_ and _what_ _advantage_ and _can I trust_ and  _where is that blaster_ —

He pushes them to the side for now. Admiring, still, the numinous web of everything around and beyond him, binding him in ways he finds he doesn’t entirely mind. The expansion and contraction of Ren’s lungs with his own. The accompanying drum of his heartbeat, lulling him so close to sleep, at last. 

The sound of rain falling on the sea. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from "The Twist" by Frightened Rabbit. Thanks for reading!
> 
> PS. Now with [ART](https://wildfang-art.tumblr.com/post/175715328871/breathe-ren-tells-him-for-what-feels-like-the) (!?!?) from the immensely talented Wildfang!


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